'You must wonder how we exist in this out-of-the-way place,'
remarked Maud.

'Rather, I envy you,' Marian answered, with a slight emphasis.

The door opened, and Alfred Yule presented himself. He was tall,
and his head seemed a disproportionate culmination to his meagre
body, it was so large and massively featured. Intellect and
uncertainty of temper were equally marked upon his visage; his
brows were knitted in a permanent expression of severity. He had
thin, smooth hair, grizzled whiskers, a shaven chin. In the
multitudinous wrinkles of his face lay a history of laborious and
stormy life; one readily divined in him a struggling and
embittered man. Though he looked older than his years, he had by
no means the appearance of being beyond the ripeness of his
mental vigour.

'It pleases me to meet you, Mr Milvain,' he said, as he stretched
out his bony hand. 'Your name reminds me of a paper in The
Wayside a month or two ago, which you will perhaps allow a
veteran to say was not ill done.'

'I am grateful to you for noticing it,' replied Jasper.

There was positively a touch of visible warmth upon his cheek.
The allusion had come so unexpectedly that it caused him keen
pleasure.

Mr Yule seated himself awkwardly, crossed his legs, and began to
stroke the back of his left hand, which lay on his knee. He